Chapter 24: The Lost Child
"Damn it, where did this freak come from?"
A man dressed in a white robe, his face concealed by a white cloth on his hood, suddenly fell to his knees, spitting out a large mouthful of blood. He had planned for a steady development, but a monster had emerged from nowhere and completely messed up all his plans. It was all ruined, nothing was left.
"Dammit, even my Shikigami is out of my control."
But what was one Cursed Spirit, which he had painstakingly cultivated, compared to his own life?
The man forcefully pulled himself together, leaning against the wall, trying to walk into the alleyway.
But a mocking voice suddenly reached his ears, instantly startling him.
"Good evening."
Following the voice, he saw a silver-haired man wearing a black, fitted, stand-collar uniform, his eyes wrapped in white bandages. The man was standing not far away under a streetlamp, looking at him with a smile.
The man immediately looked as if he had seen a ghost. He instantly recognized the other's identity, his voice trembling. "Y-you are Gojo Satoru."
"Correct. Too bad there's no prize." The man named Gojo Satoru clapped his hands cheerfully, as if indulging a child, upon the enemy correctly guessing his identity.
"You did such outrageous things, surely you weren't thinking you could just walk away unscathed, were you?"
Out of the corner of his eye, Gojo Satoru looked at the villa complex, where the air still contained the residual soot and high-concentration Cursed Energy from the release, his expression showing considerable helplessness.
"While I really wanted to slack off and let that kid take the spotlight, those stuffy old men would drive me insane."
It was simply that they couldn't stand an independent Sorcerer being stronger than most of the registered Sorcerers in the Association.
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.
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"Ishigami Yu is fine."
Hikigaya Hachiman dug the unlucky boy out of the rubble and placed him on the ground. People from the Sorcerer Association would take him to the hospital later.
After sensing the Cursed Spirit disappear, Hikigaya Hachiman certainly couldn't just leave. As a devout believer of the Emperor, he would not allow a xeno that appeared before his eyes to retreat safely.
"How far can a severely injured body escape? It must be nearby."
Hikigaya Hachiman didn't hesitate to slice his wrist across the blade of the Chainsword, causing blood to spurt out.
Strangely, the flowing blood did not obey the rules of gravity and drip to the ground. Instead, it condensed into a sphere of blood, flowing as if it possessed life force.
When the blood sphere floated in the air, it was initially the size of a fist, but it quickly swelled to a diameter of about one meter.
"Scatter."
As soon as Hikigaya Hachiman finished speaking, the entire blood sphere cleanly exploded, scattering onto the surrounding ground.
Things resembling capillaries spread out from beneath his feet at a rapid speed of fifty meters per second. Winding and twisting, countless probes twisted like snakes, automatically avoiding obstacles. This was the automatic search technique. When sensing any object with Cursed Energy or a cursed aura, the foremost feelers transmitted the intelligence information back at a speed of one hundred meters per second.
This was only possible for Hikigaya Hachiman. He possessed a talent for [Flowing Red Scale] that the old men of the Kamo family would consider monstrous. He could control blood over a distance of nearly two kilometers from himself. The current fuzzy range limit was three kilometers. This meant that the area within a one-kilometer radius was his absolutely precise search range, making finding anything the fastest possible.
As for the wounds on Hikigaya Hachiman's palm, they had basically healed within a short period, achieved not only through manipulating platelets but also by using the super high-difficulty technique known as the Reverse Cursed Technique.
"Found it!"
A scene of a small vegetable garden appeared in Hikigaya Hachiman's sight. He immediately gripped the Chainsword, pressed his foot down, and bang, he vanished from the spot.
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.
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Inside Mutsumi Wakaba's small vegetable garden, the Cursed Spirit, just like before with Ishigami Yu, needed a large amount of negative emotional energy to heal its wounds. And Mutsumi Wakaba had a considerable amount of negative emotional energy on her. The target of absorption had simply switched from Ishigami Yu to this green-haired girl.
The spider Cursed Spirit's special Cursed Technique forced Mutsumi Wakaba to continuously recall things she didn't want to think about and her current main sources of stress.
For Mutsumi Wakaba, this feeling was strange. She could clearly see the unknown monster placing a tentacle on the center of her brow. And she herself felt as if she had fallen into a deep sleep, unable to move, lying in the small vegetable garden while the past events played out like a movie in her mind.
Mutsumi Wakaba was in great pain.
Just as she herself had said, she had never once felt happy when they formed the band. They were just forming a band, so why was it so painful?
"I'm here to end the band."
The rain was heavy that day. Sayoko, completely soaked, said those words, symbolizing the utter collapse of the band Crychic that the five of them had worked hard to establish together.
Since then, everyone went their separate ways to different schools, with only Mutsumi Wakaba and Soyo Nagasaki remaining at Tsukinomori Girls' Academy.
As the only person still in contact with Sayoko, whom Soyo still longed for, Soyo often tried to subtly elicit information about Sayoko's current situation from Mutsumi.
But Mutsumi Wakaba was Togawa Sakiko's childhood friend, and Sayoko had demanded that Mutsumi promise not to reveal anything about her to Soyo. Knowing information and withholding it was an absolute betrayal in the eyes of Soyo, who considered her a friend.
Mutsumi Wakaba, caught between her two friends, was extremely distressed and didn't know what to do. Sayoko was about to break down, and Mutsumi Wakaba's own relationship with her good friend Soyo was deteriorating. It had even reached the point where Soyo was ready to form a new band and no longer needed her!
Under the manipulation of the Cursed Spirit's technique, Mutsumi Wakaba became even more depressed.
'Perhaps if I just close my eyes forever here, it would only make my friends' lives easier. No one would care about her...'
Mutsumi Wakaba sat huddled in a corner, her expression and movements becoming increasingly rigid, like a doll that had lost its magic and wound-up power.
"Huh?"
Mutsumi Wakaba, head down and knees tucked, suddenly heard a very distinct shattering sound.
A convincing yet gentle tone made Mutsumi Wakaba involuntarily raise her head in a daze, only to see that the miserable world that had been imposed upon her was crumbling like an avalanche.
All because of the boy standing in front of her.
"I don't know why you feel such heavy pressure from your friend.
"But I know that if you keep standing still, it won't help with the things you're worried about."
The Chainsword in Hikigaya Hachiman's hand directly pierced the Cursed Spirit's head, splashing a large amount of violet-black blood.
But this did not prevent him from pointing a clear path to the lost child before him.
"If it's something you can't solve yourself, why not rely on others?
I know of a place that, although not established yet, might be able to fulfill your wish."
In the collapsing world around her, Mutsumi Wakaba looked at the boy standing before her, a boy whose eyes were even more resolute than Sayoko's, listening to his comforting words.
A pang of bitterness welled up in her heart.
For some reason, looking into those pure, unadulterated eyes, Mutsumi Wakaba felt a mix of complex emotions and believed she could trust him.
Mutsumi Wakaba nodded forcefully and firmly grasped the hand the boy extended towards her.
"Yes."
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